


In-between (Between the Lines)

by Anonymississippi



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Backstory chapter, F/F, Kryptonian twins backstory I want but will never get, in-between chapter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 18:24:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7372630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymississippi/pseuds/Anonymississippi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Alex and Astra's fireside revelations, Astra reveals even more of herself to Alex. More than she's probably ever revealed to anyone. </p>
<p>Alex just wishes it didn't hurt her so damn much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In-between (Between the Lines)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Between the Lines](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5818666) by [Anonymississippi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anonymississippi/pseuds/Anonymississippi). 



> ***Same universe as Between the Lines***
> 
> I mean, I can't guarantee that you won't understand some of this without having read Between the Lines... like, you might? But this bit functions as Chapter 28.5 of Between the Lines. It's published separately, frankly, because I didn't put as much work into it as I wanted (and got behind), and, because the amount of cabin/recovery chapters post Astra's Cadmus-rescue were getting kinda excessive. Gotta move that plot forward!
> 
> Also, if you don't read this, you're not going to NOT understand anything in BtL. It's a nonessential, cutting-room-floor kind of a chapter.
> 
> Any way, just imagine they came in from the blood bond bit during BtL...

“What has Kara told you of Krypton?” Astra asks.

They’re lying together in bed, finally, face to face, knees squinched up into their curved bodies. Astra’s running her fingers through Alex’s hair and its nice, it’s _easy_ … it’s never going to last. It’s dark enough in the room that she can’t make out all of Astra’s features, but the strip of white curl is stark in the dim stillness of the cabin. Like a string of solidified pearls in undisturbed ocean water.

“As much as she can, I guess,” Alex answers, shuffling closer on the bed (as if she can get any closer). “But it’s all… skewed, I suppose? She was just a kid when she left. I imagine it’s like a kid’s description of Disney World, or holidays, compared to an adult’s. Magic. Fairy lights. Without all the arguing and waiting in line and boozing and tension over the turkey.”

“I don’t understand your comparison,” Astra confesses, brushing her fingers over the side of Alex’s cheek.

Lying in bed, talking quietly, holding Astra…

How did Alex get this lucky? How did the lesser child with the DUI charge and a graduate semester where she went MIA get past alien attacks and friendly fire and kidnapping and torture to this exact moment: to this firm _love_. Feeling grounded, like the earth has surged around them both and continents have rearranged, Pangea cracked apart and remolded to form a continent just for the two of them. Her entire body has been gutted, has shifted with the force of tectonics to accommodate the depth of feeling for Astra. Love is a load with the heaviness of a landmass; it changes over long stretches of time, expands and shrinks and jitters as the earth quakes and the core destabilizes, but it cannot be hastily moved, cannot be altered with any degree of ease. Love is hard as rock and tough like dirt—stubborn as a mountain when man gets it in his head he’s going to attempt to move it, to break it.

That’s the kind of love Alex is in.

That’s the kind of love she never dared hope for, but stumbled into nonetheless.

It’s the kind of love that could crush her if she lets it.

“You’ll get it eventually,” Alex reaches out across the covers to take hold of Astra’s hand. “Look how far you’ve come already.”

“ _It's different for you and me. You study, you become enlightened; I study, I become confused.”_

“Studying humans is not—Astra!” Alex gasps. “You finished the book!?”

“I did. Some time ago, actually,” Astra confesses. “Enough for me to reread favored passages. To study them, as the lines say.”

“I’m glad you liked it. For some reason, _War and Peace_ seemed right up your alley.”

“Does having a preference for peanut butter and novels help me ‘get’ your human culture?” Astra questions, running her hand down from Alex’s face to her arm, all the way to her hand where she locks their fingers together.

Alex blinks and she’s at the coffee shop in an instant, that morning Astra held her hand, fingers interlocked, just like this. Astra had also wiped her lip, hugged her close. It was the moment Kara probably started suspecting Alex’s motives. The morning Alex couldn’t deny herself any longer. The morning she held onto Astra for the first time and really, _really_ considered not letting go.

“Nah, not just novels and peanut butter…” Alex smirks in the darkness, wondering if Astra can see the smugness. She might be able to hear it, just from tone. “But the enemies to lovers thing? So human.”

“Oh, I was unaware that your species had taken that narrative solely as its own.”

“Well you know us humans…” Alex says, tangling her free fingers up in the black t-shirt Astra’s using as a pajama top. “We see something we want—” Alex bumps noses and realigns herself, kisses Astra with a languid sort of heat she thought she’d left behind at the fireside. “—and we _take_ it.”

“If you were an agent in my command, I’d reprimand you for your cheek.”

“Humans call it _being smooth_.”

“Is that what you are, Alexandra?” Astra asks, grabbing Alex’s thigh and rolling, maneuvering, so that she’s hovering over Alex in darkness and Alex’s leg is hitched up over her hip. Alex’s breath stutters. Their pelvises fit together snug and secure, their torsos a perfect parallel. Astra runs her hand over the material of the sweat pants and then skirts her fingers upwards, playing at the tiny slit of exposed skin at Alex’s naval.

“Hmm,” Astra chuckles, and even in the darkness, Alex knows _Astra’s_ the one sporting the smirk now. “Very smooth.”

“Not nearly as smooth as you, General,” Alex whispers against her lips, shutting her eyes when Astra touches her forehead to Alex’s own.

“You give me too much credit,” Astra snickers, dipping her head against Alex’s neck and rolling back off of her, grabbing her hand again in the dark.

They breathe together, rest, savoring the uncommon feeling of mutual affection.

“You know I can’t help but believe in you,” Alex says softly. “You’re like… like seeing a dragon after only hearing stories forever.”

“Is that the fire-breathing beast?” Astra checks her. “The one covered in scales, terrorizing the populace?”

“It’s the one I never thought was real. You just… you make me believe in really big—great—things.”

“You believed in things much greater than me far earlier than our earliest meeting,” Astra counters her, squeezing Alex’s hand.

“Why do you do that?”

“What?”

“Discredit yourself so easily.”

Astra sighs.

“Alex—”

“I wish you believed in yourself like I do,” Alex tells her, turning her head even if she can’t fully see Astra. “Like Kara does. Change is so hard and… no one with any less strength could have done what you did. You’re so worth it, so _strong_ , Astra.”

“One chance at change doesn’t negate a life’s worth of mistakes, Alexandra. Whatever consequences I must face after Myriad—”

“—are things you have blown up and over-dramatized in your head.”

“Can you fault me, truly, when everything else in my life has so gone horribly awry?”

_Fair point_ , Alex thinks, wondering what it must have been like to see certain doom uncomfortably close, to fear it, to survive it, and then to throw away the one tool she’d hoped to use to circumvent that doom altogether. Myriad.

Alex hears more than sees Astra inhale slowly, feels the shift of her body as she turns back over to face Alex again.

“And why do you believe in dragons?” Astra murmurs uncertainly. “Why do you believe in me?”

“After knowing you were the one to influence Kara so much, knowing you came to me, knowing you could be… knowing you were leaving Myriad, something you’d worked over a decade for?” Alex doesn’t feel like she’s making any sense, but she needs Astra to _get_ this. Her eyes have adjusted to the darkness now and Alex can tell, just from the clench of her unyielding jaw, that Astra doesn’t believe her. “Even though… I almost get it. You wanted to save people, too. Astra, I—I don’t understand how you believe I could ever think less of you.”

“Again, you… you know nothing of me,” Astra pulls away from Alex and runs scarred, deathly fingers over her own face, pushes sweaty, tangled ringlets of hair behind her ears. The lines near her eyes seem more prominent, her demeanor lax—no longer the solemn, pugnacious general Alex had once considered her enemy.

“I hate that line from you,” Alex says. “I do know you. I wonder if _you_ know who you’ve become.”

“You see but one side,” Astra counters. “And of course I revel in your praise, in Kara’s smiles, in your friends’ awe. It’s flattering, and I am just as susceptible to it as the next person. But compliments only go so far against the actions to which they are attributed, and my actions at my base are far from complimentary, Alexandra,” Astra sits up and leans her head back against the headboard, her eyes shutting as she winces, contorting her expression into one of apparent consternation.

“I make examples of those who oppose me,” she whispers. “I sway appeals in my favor, so that when the time for judgment comes, I am able to enact it in any way I see fit. I often do so in gruesome fashion, though I take no joy in it. But an example needs to be set. A lesson learned. Through grisly punishment do I retain only a loose grip on my forces; tenuous control at best. Alexandra, I am so beyond grateful that you do not know that part of me, because you would hate her as much as I do.”

There it is.

The _split_.

That damned coping mechanism it seems that the aliens have to put in place just to survive in this world: Kara Danvers, Kara Zor-El, Supergirl, J’onn J’onzz, Director Henshaw, Martian Manhunter, Astra In-Ze, General, First Daughter, Arclominian, Tolstoy.

“Tell me about her,” Alex challenges. “You say I can’t take that, but I think you know I can. And that scares you… about me. Knowing I can handle that part of you. What you think is the worst part. Because it must… mess with your perception of what you think humans are. Simple or… I don’t know,” Alex runs an agitated hand over her head and props herself up against the headboard, too. It almost feels like Astra is running away from her with that quick shift, even though she hasn’t moved but two feet.

“You know that there’s the part of me that I hate, too,” Alex continues. “The part that lied to Kara forever, the jealous part, the part that’s never felt good enough when faced with the prospect of a superhuman sister. I have a feeling that that part of myself… please, come back—” Alex asks, groping below the covers for Astra’s hand, needing to connect with her for this, needing the touch to register indelibly when she tries to offer this comfort. “That part of myself, and the part of yourself that you hate… I feel like they would get along really well together. And I don’t think it’s fair to…to split ourselves up that way. Kara has to do it, and it _hurts_ her. Compartmentalizing her existence that way, it… she’s tearing herself apart. All of it, the shitty stuff, and the good stuff, that’s who we are, Astra. And if I can’t take the bad with the good, then I don’t deserve any of it.”

Astra stares ahead at the wall and squeezes Alex’s hand as hard as she can. It doesn’t hurt. Astra's helpless now.

“What has Kara told you… of me, on Krypton?” Astra asks again.

“That you were her hero,” Alex answers. “That you were her… jet-setting, star-gazing aunt, who spoke languages that she could only dream about, who brought her presents from other planets, who was… I think she called you glamorous.”

Astra laughs humorlessly.

“As you said earlier, the skewed perceptions of a child,” Astra answers. “I was all of those things, in some way, I suppose. A traveler… a few languages to my credit, gift-giver on every visit, because I didn’t get to be there every day, unless I was on duty at the garrison. Alura couldn’t stomach my indulgences, but I saw Kara so infrequently… Kara doesn’t look like me, but—almost. She’s what I could have had, if I—I’m sorry.”

The first tear rolls over Astra’s cheek. Astra catches it with her finger, wipes discreetly under the hollow of her eye socket. “She takes after Zor-El, but right here,” Astra points toward her jaw, the curving line of her face sloping downward sharply. Kara’s cheek is slightly more rounded, Alex thinks, but allows Astra her daydream.

“I was devoted to my studies at the Academy in Argo City before enlisting,” Astra begins. “At that time, Alura and I were… not famous, not really, but it was not common for the pair of us to do as well as we did, assigned by status as we were.”

“Kara indicated as much. She said you were… uhm, middle born? Is that the right phrase?”

“Yes,” Astra says. “We were fine, growing up. Well-educated, never wanting, loved. My mother’s dresses, her robes were… astounding,” Astra wipes at her face again, another tear for the collection. “She pushed, and pushed, and worked hard...loved us fiercely. And we did well, because of her drive, despite Krypton’s penchant for grouping students—challenging them according to prescribed levels of assessment. But we were not well-off financially, socially…not at all. So when Alura performed so spectacularly in her early adjudication simulations, she was scouted, hounded even—by the High Council, Tribunal Circuit Courts, by independent firms. And when my own results came in, and I surpassed the high-borns who had been ranked much higher during Instruction years…”

“You blew them out of the water,” Alex supplies.

“Something like that,” Astra says. “But I.T. leveled us all.”

“I.T.?”

“Initial Training for the military. High-borns were no different than low-borns in those first three lunar cycles. We were… a new family, of sorts. Out of the regiments, parceled down as the training proceeded, nine of us were elevated in rank. Nine of us exceeded expectations for every trial placed before us, nine of us rewarded, nine of us received the medals, nine of us assigned, all together, for our first off-world expedition. Our objective was to deliver supplies to a refugee outpost on Streld. Civil war had ravaged much of the land; off-world invaders slaughtered entire family lines for control of the provincial grounds, rich with a mineral that could be harvested, liquefied, and then used as a power source.”

“Like… oil fields?” Alex asks.

“Similar, yes, but not as… underdeveloped.”

“And then…?”

“Nine of us went in for the mission… three of us returned.”

“Astra, the first ones…” Alex tries for the hollow comfort, but she knows the soldier’s burden all too well.

Meaningless reassurances don’t do a lot of good when you’ve seen blood spilt by your side. She thinks back to Ortiz, one of her first missions in command after she’d started writing Astra. The girl had survived, but the therapy with her prosthetic post-op had hit a significant hitch. Ortiz was clinically depressed at 26, and everyone in the DEO knew it, thanks to the scuttlebutt from the med-bay—and part of that diagnosis was on Alex.

“Missions with casualties always hit the hardest,” Alex manages, thinks about a life that could have been lived, if not for her involvement on the op.

“I watched invaders kill a child,” Astra says, shifts her head to the side, the tears flowing freely now. “And I knew… somewhat in abstract, that I had consented to experiences like that, with my enlistment. That I would witness the deaths of those close to me, those I worked with… and I reconciled that, I did… but I still remember her. Star-colored hair, clever, sparkling brown eyes—no older than Kara at the time. My captain wrapped her up and shielded her with his body. But it didn’t matter, because the beams went straight through his torso, hit her in the chest… stained the red sand even redder,” Astra’s breathing is harder now, her chest pumping like it had the night before, when she’d felt too confined in the back of the getaway car.

“Scar—scarlet… wet and… crimson. It was this… f-fearsome gradient of red that I couldn’t shake from my mind. It’s why I hate that cape,” Astra grins against her panting breaths. “I wretched for an hour when I returned to the ship, having sustained a broken arm. A first major injury, but I did return to my family.”

“Astra…”

“She could’ve been Kara,” Astra pushes. “I did get over it—that’s not why I’m telling you this. I had other missions, other friends, other casualties, an entire planet, my sister—you would think that would register deeper, pull somewhere internally that convicted me, charged me to hold my own family in higher regard than a strange girl on a foreign world.”

“What are you getting at?” Alex asks her, shifting closer, placing a hand on Astra's trembling leg.

“Fort Rozz was a trial,” Astra nods to herself, staring blankly ahead. “It was an intergalactic prison, handled by authorities from multiple worlds. It was positioned beyond Krypton’s orbit in the Phantom Zone, but Krypton had sister galaxies, with other, healthier suns; many of the surrounding planets in those galaxies were inhabited by our allies. They used Fort Rozz, too—and Alura knew it.”

“Astra,” Alex moves close enough that her arm presses against Astra’s. She keeps her breathing steady, hoping to soothe Astra’s labored inhalations through proximity alone. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“A life sentence for a non-violent offense… but she said she believed me…”

“Astra, I still don’t follow, please—”

“I can’t help but think,” Astra breaks, shakes her head as her breath hitches, her gasping growing more severe (to Alex’s heightened concern). “That she r-r-recognized the inevitable. That my sentence, to Fort Rozz? It was her way of s-s-sparing me, even after all I’d done...I... I could’ve been acquitted so easily, especially in the intergalactic appellate courts. Even if other planets on the edges of the galaxy had been damaged in Krypton’s implosion, they’d not have left the prison with no guards, no warden, no administration."

"Too many criminals in the galaxy," Alex mutters.

"Exactly. Fort Rozz was too big an asset.”

It clicks instantly, a switch of understanding flipped: it’s the way Alex has lived her whole life. _Sacrifice_ for Kara. _Lie_ for Kara. _Do the hard thing_ for Kara.

“You think Alura… sentenced you to save you?” Alex manages.

“It wasn’t a _good_ plan, obviously,” Astra responds humorlessly. “But she loved me, I know… and you see how she saved Kara? Sending _a child_ off-world with no guidance—I think she believed me and she was desperate enough to try anything.”

Desperation is its own special motivation, and yet…

“Do you think you’re…” Alex gnaws on the inside of her jaw. She doesn’t want to upset Astra any more than she already is. “I can’t speak to your relationship with her, but do you think you’re giving Alura more credit than she deserves?”

“Non had killed the guard, but I was on the other side of the city,” Astra explains, taking a huge, gulping breath. “My crimes were administering pamphlets, writing anonymous publications, a bit of lab work, inciting a riot—pride, perhaps, that I wasn’t blissfully ignorant in the end. The High Council called it propaganda and Alura couldn’t oppose them without losing her position."

"Her influence was at stake," Alex says, following Astra's thought process with unsettling ease.

"And then what power would she have held, to try and implement her precious reason?" Astra does laugh this time, but it's high, uncontrolled, on the verge of manic. "Alura didn’t have enough evidence to send me to Fort Rozz with Myriad in its infancy. That’s why I was… enraged for so long, I didn’t understand. I had friends off-world, connections from my time as general. They could have simply banished me, though Alura likely knew I'd be stubborn enough to return. She had to hold me somewhere... safe, ironically. But after some time, I think the case would have been over-ruled... I was a high-profile commander, I could have lived in another galaxy…" Astra trails off, blinking, her gleaming, sorrowful eyes soft as Alex has ever seen them.

"And she knew it," Astra finishes. "Alura saw her chance and she took it. She knew I had a _chance_.”

Astra brings her fists down on the mattress in a fit of frustration. Alex has grown so accustomed to the mask (the one Astra wears, the one Alex herself wears), it’s almost a relief to know Astra can feel so deeply, to break, near irreparably. But she understands why Astra pushes it down, dons the mask, forgoes feeling. Grief and guilt this intense could defeat even the strongest souls.

“But after… at some point I knew Krypton had to have… shattered—Alura—then I believed Kara—”

Astra doesn’t continue, just brings her hands to her face and sobs, cries until Alex can stand it no longer. Alex holds her as she shakes in her embrace, as Astra cries tears her powers have probably prevented, relives moments she’s repressed for as long as her stolid control could keep them at bay. But something about Alex renders Astra vulnerable; and Alex is both humbled and invigorated by the knowledge—that an alien general could fall apart in her arms, in her bed, in her care.

“Fort R-rozz was torture,” Astra says. “But the Phantom Zone—has Kara spoken of it?”

“She called it stasis, a… deep sleep,” Alex whispers into the crown of Astra’s head. Her curls brush against Alex’s lips as she murmurs her answer. “She dreamed of her purpose, of Clar—Kal-El, of wanting to succeed with the mission Alura set for her.”

“That’s very good. It’s what she should have been thinking of.”

“But you… you thought of that girl, didn’t you? For… however long you were in the Phantom Zone, you just saw that girl—the one that reminded you of Kara?”

Alex feels the nod against her neck and wishes it were a sharp, vocalized _no_.

“I saw her die so many times…lived in stasis, paralysis, _hell_ for however long I was there, detesting Alura, mourning Kara, regretting my ineptitude, how ineffectual I had been to stop my own planet’s demise—”

“It’s not your fault,” Alex reassures her, allows her hand to fall to Astra’s cheek, to wipe away the years of guilt she’s been harboring. “You can’t hold that. No one can. Human, Kryptonian—it’s not your fault, Astra, please.”

“I saw red, Alexandra. When Krypton shattered, I know it was burning red, red as the sands of Streld, red as the blood of my captain, red like the entrails of that child, from her exit wound—”

“Shhhh.”

“I saw red for—decades. In the Phantom Zone, that’s all I saw. Red. Hate. Destruction. Alex, I—”

“I know,” Alex says, but she doesn’t, not really… can’t fully tell if these are minor symptoms of PTSD that Astra’s displaying—or does display (has displayed), in her constant need to get the feelings _out of her head._

(“I like to write,” Astra had said. “It helps me sort my thoughts.”).

“It’s… it’s not alright, but I’m here, okay?” Alex presses her lips against Astra’s cheek and holds her, holds her because she’s hasn’t been able to for as long as she’s wanted. Making up for lost time… or… lost planets. “I’m right here, and there’s nothing red about me.” Alex can’t help it. She pulls Astra as close as she can and shifts so that they’re lying down once more, parallel to each other, teary eyes on both sides of the bed. “I’m here,” Alex promises.

Astra clutches her shirt and cries, mourns, grieves. They stay so close for so long that Alex loses sense of time while she strokes little comforts against Astra’s back, rubs her arm, breathes into her ear. She hums at some point, a song with words she can’t remember, and sleeps after Astra succumbs to exhaustion.

Alex holds her like an heirloom—something ancient and precious, surprisingly delicate for lasting so long. Somewhere between consciousness and oblivion, Alex registers that Astra has given her the psychology behind her decisions, the personal actions and memories and motives that inspire every move she makes as commander. By giving Alex this part of herself, Alex knows Astra’s given up every advantage she’s held, that Astra has rendered herself utterly defenseless against Alex.

And holding someone who could break the world in half makes Alex feel…

So incredibly powerful.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm choosing to believe the best in Alura. I WANT to think she tried to save Astra in her own desperate way. Probable? Nope. Possible? Yep. That's literally the only thing I'm hanging onto at this point.
> 
> Shout out to @littlelamplight because she knows how much I love those In-Ze jaguars and all their underdeveloped potential story lines *le sigh*


End file.
